way to harsh rivalry; soldierly friendships, under the anticipation of advancement, die out. A vacancy due to death is for the benefit of survivors and they know it. "At Talavera," says Stendhal, "two officers stood together at their battery, while a ball comes and the captain falls. 'Good,' says the lieutenant, 'now François is dead and I shall be captain.' 'Not yet,' says François, who was only stunned and who gets up on his feet. These two men were neither unfriendly nor inimical, only the lieutenant wanted to rise a step higher in rank." And this shrewd observer adds: "Such was the furious egoism then styled love of glory and which, under this title, the Emperor had communicated to the French." On this slope the slide is rapid and abject. Each, at first, thinks of himself; the individual makes of himself a center. The example, moreover, comes from above. Is it for France or for himself that Napoleon works?[3362] So many immense enterprises, the conquest of Spain, the expedition into Russia, the installation of his brothers and relations on new thrones, the constant partition and rearrangement of Europe, all those incessant and more and more distant wars, is it for the public good and common safety that he accumulates them? What does he himself desire if not to push his fortunes still farther?--He is too much ambitious (trop ambitionnaire), say his own soldiers;[3363] and yet they follow him to the last. "We have always marched along with him," replied the old grenadiers,[3364] who had traversed Poland to penetrate into Russia; "we couldn't abandon him this time and leave him alone by himself."--But others who see him nearer by, those who stand first and next to him, do as he does; and, however high these have mounted, they want to mount still higher, or, otherwise, to keep their places, or, at least, provide for themselves and hold on to something substantial. Masséna has accumulated forty millions and Talleyrand sixty;[3365] in case of a political crash the money remains. Soult tried to have himself elected king of Portugal,[3366] and Bernadotte finds means to have himself elected king of Sweden. After Leipsic, Murat bargains with the allies, and, to retain his Neapolitan kingdom, he agrees to furnish a contingent against France; before the battle of Leipsic, Bernadotte is with the allies and fights with them against France. In 1814, Bernadotte and Joseph, each caring for himself, the former by intrigues and with the intriguers of the interior, also by feeling his way with the foreign sovereigns while the latter, in the absence of Napoleon, by "singular efforts" and "assiduities" beforehand with Marie Louise thinks of taking the place of the falling emperor.[3367] Prince Eugene alone, or almost alone, among the great personalities of the reign, is really loyal, his loyalty remaining always intact exempt from concealed motives and above suspicion. Everywhere else, the coming crash or sinister rumors are